New on the Net: the cheese-cam

We had a hard time deciding on a headline for this blog. Candidates included "Cheese-o-vision" and "Oh, how I love Cheesus," but we thought those might be too corny.

The New York Times on Tuesday ran a piece about a wheel of cheddar that has its own 24/7 Webcast, celebrity MySpace.com page and romantic life (people have sent it love letters and written it love poems). Yes, you read that right; it's a hunk of cheese, sitting on a shelf, getting moldy (we mean "ripening") at a farm in Westcombe, Somerset, England. Now we know what Wallace & Gromit watch on their nights off.

West Country Farmhouse

As The New Yorker would say, "there will always be an England," although we're betting this concept would go over well in other parts of the world, too.

How about a French Webcam trained on a sumptuously oozing wheel of Brie? Or a chunk of Roquefort in a dank basement, contentedly mouldering with penicillin spores? Italy could record a loaf of taleggio stinking away, and Switzerland could document the private life of a stoic hunk of Emmenthaler awaiting its melty fondue fate.

Back in the States, as a celebration of cheese, Adult Swim could reissue its Boondocks episode, "The Garden Party," that now-classic fable of cheese's pivotal role in overcoming barriers of race and class in an American neighborhood.

Meanwhile, according to The New York Times, the cheese's creator, Tom Carver, says he feels considerable affection for his now-famous cheddar, but he can't play favorites among his many darlings.